


An Exercise in Pettiness

by SpaceBattery



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Gen, Humor, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 04:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceBattery/pseuds/SpaceBattery
Summary: Or, Why Nora is Probably Never Going to Boston Ever Again





	An Exercise in Pettiness

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is the first fic I'm putting up here, I hope you enjoy!  
> For reference, Alva is the Lone Wanderer (Good Karma, Former member of the Brotherhood of Steel, ridiculously lucky)  
> Nora is my Courier (Good Karma, Independent Vegas)  
> This takes place during the events of Fallout 4  
> Enjoy!

     Alva Quinn had seen a lot of amazing shit in the ten years since he left Vault 101.

     He’d seen a town built around an undetonated nuclear bomb. He’d seen a massive, improbable airship flying over the skies of Boston.

     Hell, he’d even been abducted by aliens...though he might’ve been high when that happened, he wasn’t entirely sure.

     Even after all of that, Alva was still impressed by the Lucky 38 Casino.

     Mostly because the Lucky 38 was the gaudiest fucking building Alva had seen in his entire life.

     …Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. Gomorrah was worse.

     The point was, the building looked amazingly weird (seriously, what were those bulb things around its top supposed to even _be?_ ), and if it weren’t for the fact that he knew the owner, he’d never have set foot inside. Hell, if Alva weren’t naturally curious (and also kind of an idiot), he’d never have wandered into New Vegas in the first place.

     As Alva walked into the Lucky 38, he could understand why most people were still wary of the place, even after six years of it being made open to the people of the Mojave. The lighting was dark, and Alva could see dust floating in the air around him. It definitely looked like a place that had been devoid of life for 200 years. But he also saw signs of life in the casino: a motorcycle helmet and a pair of goggles hanging on a hook near the entrance, a half-assembled plasma rifle on a table, the remains of one of the slot machines lying on a counter, and empty soda bottles. Empty soda bottles _everywhere._

     And, most notably, the sounds of tinny music coming from up the stairs. Alva smiled, knowing he had found who he was looking for as he climbed the stairs.

     Sure enough, standing behind the bar, tinkering with an engine, humming along with the radio at the end of the bar, was the person he wanted to see.

     “The lighting in here is shite.” Alva said in lieu of a greeting.

     Nora didn’t even look up. “I’ve been trying to fix it for weeks. No such luck.”

     “Have you tried smashing in a wall and making a window?”

     “That was the second thing I tried. The walls here are thicker than my skull, it’s ridiculous.”

     “Somethin’ thicker than you? I didn’t think it was possible!”

     Nora gave a wry smile and a laugh. “Neither did I. But hey, place withstood the Great War, I’m not surprised it withstood me taking a hammer to it.”

     Alva nodded as he walked over to the bar. He tapped at the engine and said, “So, what’s this?”

     Nora sighed. “Motorcycle was acting up on my way back here yesterday. Already fixed the problem, I’m just tweaking some parts, making sure everything’s back in working order.”

     Alva hummed in understanding. Nora’s motorcycle was her pride and joy. An Old-World relic made from New-World tech, Nora had spent two months studying an older one that she had dragged home and recreating it, remaking each part down to the tiniest detail (the casino floor was covered in parts and scrap metal for those two months, much to the dismay of everyone around her). When it was finally done, she tested out her new ride by taking it on a tour all the way around the New Vegas Strip’s fence.

     (Which abruptly ended when she almost crashed into Freeside’s north gate, but hey, nothing’s perfect.)

     “So,” Nora said, pulling Alva out of his thoughts, “What’s a former Brotherhood of Steel member doing in my casino?”

     “Well,” Alva began, taking a seat at the bar, “I’ve got a job for you.”

     That made Nora look up from her work. “A job?”

     Alva nodded. “Mm-hm. I need you to deliver a message to someone.”

     Nora raised an eyebrow, amused. She went back to tinkering with the engine as she replied. “Haven’t done a courier job in a while. Bad experience with the last one. So I guess now, the question becomes, what’s this job worth to you?”

     There’s what Alva’d been looking for. “I’m glad you asked.” He pulled out a small sack and plopped it onto the bar. The sound of the caps jingling inside the bag as it hit the bar made Nora look up again.

     “One thousand caps,” Alva said, grinning.

     Alva could tell Nora looked interested, but she tilted her head and said, “ _Just_ a thousand?”

_Figured you’d want more than just that_ , Alva thought. Well, that was okay. Nora was right; this job was worth a lot more than just a thousand caps. “There’s another thousand in it for you if you complete the job.”

     Nora smirked. She put down her tools and leaned against the bar. “You had my curiosity, and now you have my attention. What’s the job?”

     Alva grinned. “Well, you see…” Alva leaned closer and whispered the plan to Nora. When he leaned back, Nora’s eyes were wide.

     And after a moment, a smile grew across Nora’s face.

     “That is the dumbest fucking plan I’ve ever heard you come up with. Gimme those caps, I’m in.”

 

     It took Nora three days to ride from New Vegas to Boston.

     Nora knew from experience that trying to drive a straight line across the Mojave Wasteland to the Commonwealth isn’t actually possible. Mostly because there are things in the way of that line.

     Things like towns. And water. And mountains. And radiation.

     (And also raiders, but taking potshots at them with a laser pistol scares them off pretty effectively.)

     Once Nora _got_ to Boston, however, that’s when things got a bit trickier. Alva’s directions had been rather vague (“Just look for the giant airship, it’s huge, you can’t miss it!”). In addition, many of the buildings were close together, and she ran into more raiders about three times.

     In fact, she’d been pretty certain she ran over a frag mine at some point. How the hell she and her motorcycle weren’t in pieces after that was anyone’s guess.

     Eventually, Nora took a pit stop next to a large building with a rusted gate and a sign that she didn’t care to read. She had some food, drank some of her water, and brushed some of the dust off of her and her bike.

     Then, as she finished dusting off the headlamp, she looked up, stared for a moment, and said, “Oh.”

     There, hovering above a fortified building, was a massive airship.

     “Bingo,” Nora muttered. She readjusted her bag, and climbed back onto her motorcycle.

     It was time to get this show started.

 

     Nora had trouble thinking of the Prydwen as belonging to the Brotherhood of Steel. Probably because the Brotherhood chapter she knew lived in a hole in the ground, but even disregarding that, the idea was foreign to her.

     When Nora boarded the Prydwen, she almost immediately got lost. The place was exactly as big as it looked, and it was a bit ridiculous to her. It didn’t help that most of the people she passed glared at her, or that the ones who deigned to speak to her as she passed addressed her as ‘civilian’, saying it like it was a dirty word.

     Nora had been on the ship for two minutes when she decided she _really_ didn’t like these guys.

     Luckily, she wasn’t lost for very long. When Nora finally gave up and asked for help, she was given directions to the main command deck. As she walked her way there, Nora thought about the job she had undertaken.

     Nora wasn’t sure why Alva wanted her to do this job. It had seemed to Nora like Alva had a personal grudge against this guy, which…wasn’t really like Alva. From what Nora knew of him, Alva liked people; he wasn’t big on holding grudges. Nora wondered what kind of person someone would have to be to have Alva hate them that much.

     When Nora got to the command deck and met Elder Maxson for herself, she took one look at him and immediately understood why Alva hated the guy so much.

     He was giving a speech when she entered, so she hung back and waited, leaning against a nearby wall. Nora only half listened to him, but the bits she did hear, she didn’t like.  The man talked about the world below him like it was something to be conquered; its people like things to push around and use to their liking.

     Maxson reminded Nora of another man who had been affiliated with the Brotherhood. And Nora had locked _that_ man in a vault under a Pre-War casino. Mostly because he spent a good part of a week forcing her and three others to help him get into that vault, under threat of blowing all of their heads off.

     So yeah, Nora didn’t like Maxson very much. The young woman he was giving this speech to didn’t seem to like him very much either.

     After another minute, Nora had enough. She pushed herself off the wall, and cleared her throat. Both Maxson and the young woman turned to look at her.

     “I’ve got a message for an ‘Elder Maxson’?” Nora said.

     “You are speaking to him,” Maxson said haughtily.

     Nora resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and stepped forward. She waited for a second, taking a calming breath. It was very important that she got this right.

     “Well?” Maxson snapped.

     “Alva Quinn sends his regards, and says, ‘Kiss my ass, you sanctimonious bastard’.”

     Then Nora reared back, and punched Maxson in the face.

 

     Nora’s only regret from that job was that she didn’t get a good look at Maxson’s face when she punched him. Right after she had hit him, Nora had turned around and booked it. She ran all the way back to her motorcycle, which she had left outside the airport, and kicked it into high gear, kicking up some dust as she tore her way out of Boston. She almost forgot to put her helmet back on, too, right up until a small cloud of smoke from someone smoking in an alley blocked her vision and she nearly crashed. Not that she reacted to it beyond slowing the bike to a crawl while she put her helmet and goggles back on.

     Nora got back to the Lucky 38 in half the time it took her to get to Boston. As she walked up the stairs to the doors, she busied herself with taking off her helmet and gloves. She stopped when she noticed something a little bit… different.

     “Huh,” Nora said. Then she looked back up, and walked through the door to the casino.

     When she went up the stairs to the bar, Alva was sitting at one of the tables. His feet were propped up onto the table, and he was reading something Nora couldn’t see. A plasma pistol sat next to Alva’s feet, along with a half-full soda bottle.

     …Wait a minute.

     “Did you take that from my stash?”

     Alva started, looked at Nora, moved his legs slightly to look at the soda, then looked back at Nora and said, “I might’ve.”

     “After all the trouble I went through to do this job. I’d be offended if I cared enough. And get your feet off that table, I don’t want to have to repair it again.”

     At the mention of the job, Alva grinned. He took his feet off the table and leaned forward. “So? Did you do it?”

     Nora tilted her head, pretending to think for a moment as she walked toward Alva’s table. “Hm…I dunno.”

     Nora lifted her right hand to where Alva could see it, showing off the small bruises on her knuckles from when she punched Maxson, and said, “Did I?”

     Alva stared at her hand for a moment, and doubled over cackling. “That’s fuckin’ amazing! I almost can’t believe you fuckin’ did it!”

     Nora snorted and sat down across from Alva. “I’d certainly hope I did, it took me two hours to find the damn blimp once I got to Boston. I didn’t think it was possible to not be able to find a giant airship, but hey, what do I know?”

     “I almost wish I could’a seen his face when you did it,” Alva said, wiping tears from his eyes.

     “I wish I had, too. Unfortunately, I was too busy running like hell and getting off the damn blimp to get a picture.”

     “Why didn’t you get a picture? That would have been great!”

     “Because I have no desire to be shot at by a bunch of angry people wielding energy weapons?”

     Alva thought for a moment, and then nodded. “That’s fair.”

     “Speaking of fair,” Nora continued, holding out her other hand, “Where are my caps?”

     “Right!” Alva dug into his backpack, and pulled out another small, jingling bag, which he deposited into Nora’s open palm.

     Nora smiled. “Thank you.”

     “Oh! And, uh…” Alva looked down, now nervous, “I kinda forgot earlier, but there was another thing I wanted to ask about?”

     Nora looked up from putting her newly earned caps away. “…Yes?”

     “…Could you fix my plasma pistol?”

     Nora gave Alva the blandest look she could muster. “Really?”

     “I’ll give you a rifle and this cool comic I found?” Alva, looking rather sheepish, picked up the comic from where it had been sitting on his lap.

     “…Fine.”


End file.
